Editorial
Front Page - Friday, July 24, 2009
I Swear...
There stood Watson, “and the dream almost came true”
Vic Fleming
If someone had told me that at the 2009 Open Championship (known stateside as the British Open), the guy playing the 72nd hole with a one-stroke lead had the initials T.W., I’d have believed it.
But, like any rational human with the slightest ken of golf, I’d have envisioned Tiger Woods cruising to victory.
If I then were told, “Wrong T.W.,” who knows how long it would have taken even to come up with another T.W.?
Category: People with initials T.W who could win the 2009 British Open. People who would not be in the category include Tom Wolfe, Ted Williams, Tom Watson.
But, as the world now knows, there stood Watson, all 59 years of him.
He who holds eight major golf wins, he who had won the British five times before, he who had won it in the ‘70s and ‘80s (and thus could have become the first to win in three decades) stood one shot ahead of the pack. Or, more precisely, one stroke ahead of Stewart Cink.
Only 460 yards stood between Watson and the hole, and he had four strokes to burn for a par and his 6th British Open victory.
To quote a friend of mine, “How’d that happen?”
Well, to start with any highlight reel will show Watson holing out putts of 40 and 60 feet on the first day and a couple of similar hole-outs on days 2 and 3. Holing lengthy shots goes a long way toward putting one in a position to win a golf tournament.
To say nothing of Ross Fisher, who seized the lead from Watson early on day four, taking 8 strokes, a quadruple-bogey, on hole number five (“I hit a great sixth shot,” Fisher said later). Or of Lee Westwood, who clunked his way to a par on the easy-birdie 17th and then 3-putted 18 for a bogey to fall one stroke back. These things happen in majors.
Anyhow, back to the 18th at Turnberry, Scotland, where Watson’s scores of 5-under, 1-over, even par and 1-over through 17 had him at 3-under for the tourney and in ideal circumstances to claim the Claret Jug.
The drive was perfect, a 3-iron to the middle of the fairway, leaving him 170 yards from the pin, downwind. Watson was thinking 9-iron, but took the 8-iron instead, normally a safe decision, understandable for a pro.
But not this day, Tom! “Hit the 9! Play it short!” my mind was screaming at him!
As soon as he hit it, he said, “That’s too far.” The ball soared toward the flag, bounced hard and trickled into the fringy rough just over the green. Being on the putting surface was the most important consideration, and he had not accomplished the task.
Watson was once a great player from the fringe just off the green. I recall his chipping in for a birdie on no. 17 at Pebble Beach on the last day of a U.S. Open there, but that’s another story, one that I hark back to primarily because I birdied that same hole (in the dark) a year later on my first trip to Pebble.
But now Tom constantly uses his putter from fringy areas around greens, and this putt took off on his and slid 8 feet past the hole.
I was on my feet now. “C’mon, Tom! Put a good stroke on it and it’ll dive in on that left side, from where the wind is blowing. But it looked as though he almost missed the ball. It wobbled left of the cup. He took bogey, which tied him with Cink, who had clammed a 12-footer in for birdie about 30 minute earlier.
In the 4-hole playoff, Watson’s wheels came off, and Cink won by six strokes.
“It would have been a hell of a story, wouldn’t it?” Watson said. “And it was almost. Almost. The dream almost came true.”
I SWEAR
© 2009
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